Radio review

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's Men of Fashion (Radio 4) is served in short, snappy instalments. Somebody in radio has wisely assumed that we can only consume limited quantities of the big-cuffed presenter, and these slivers are stuffed full of comment from plainer personalities. Just when you think you can't take another grandiloquent assertion from Llewelyn-Bowen, his delivery like a curlicue, it stops.

He began this survey with Henry VIII, with Llewelyn-Bowen trying to do justice to the image in Holbein's famous painting. "He's like a great big brocade tea-chest," he said. "By thunder, there's a lot of him." His eye was then detained by a detail: "This enormous, rearing codpiece that looks as if it's about to strike like a cobra." Brilliantly, there are 14 more episodes to come.

Composer of the Week, on Astor Piazzolla, was also in jaunty mood, opening with a phrase not often heard on Radio 3: "Strip to your underwear." Piazzolla wrote tango music about as flamboyant as Llewelyn-Bowen, but the locals in Buenos Aires weren't keen.

He wanted them to listen, they wanted to dance, and it ended in fisticuffs. "If you decide to change music," Piazzolla advised, "you should know something about boxing."